Field of the Technology
The present disclosure relates generally to communication techniques for assisting wireless mobile terminals for wireless communications, and more particularly to techniques for facilitating the communication of neighboring network information to mobile terminals for handover purposes.
Description of the Related Art
Mobile terminals may be adapted to operate in one or more of a variety of different types of wireless networks, such as wireless local area networks (WLANs), WiMAX networks, cellular telecommunication networks, etc. When operating in a WLAN or WiMAX network, the mobile terminal may lose radio coverage with the network or otherwise need to switch to an alternative neighboring wireless network to continue communications.
To do this, the mobile terminal could scan using its one or more wireless transceivers to identify available wireless networks in its coverage region. Excessive scanning by the mobile terminal, however, may consume too much time and power of the mobile terminal. It may be helpful, on the other hand, if the identifications of the available wireless networks could be obtained by the mobile terminal via the current wireless network before the switching occurs. Given the new network components and modules which could be required to achieve this goal, however, deployment could become burdensome and difficult, especially given the many diverse wireless networks already in existence today.